Azaranica is a non-biased news aggregator on Hazaras and Hazarajat...The main aim is to promote understanding and respect for cultural identities by highlighting the realities they are facing on daily basis...Hazaras have been the victim of active persecution and discrimination and one of the reasons among many has been the lack of information, awareness and disinformation...... To further awareness against violence, disinformation and discrimination, we have launched a sister Blog for youths and youths are encouraged to share their stories and opinions; Young Pens

Sunday, September 30, 2012

The picture of Killed Lej terrorist Mujeeb-ur-Rehman who was killed in cross fire during an attack on Jeweler's shop, here in Liaqat Bazara, Quetta.

"One killed, another injured in Quetta

Quetta—At least one person was killed and another wounded in a drive-by shooting in Quetta on Sunday.

According to media reports, unknown gunmen riding a bike opened fire on a jewelry shop at Liaquat Bazaar, leaving its owner, Abid Ali, injured. A guard stationed outside the shop opened retaliatory fire, killing one attacker.

The police said that the dead assailant was identified as Mujeeb-ur-Rehman, who was a Levies personnel. The injured jeweler was shifted to CMH Hospital. —Online"

Thursday, September 27, 2012

The Right Livelihood Award; For Outstanding Vision and Work on behalf of our Planet and its people

Sima Samar (Afghanistan)
(2012)

Samar at a girl’s school run by Shuhada Organization, Daikundi province, 2003

"...for her longstanding and courageous dedication to human rights, especially the rights of women, in one of the most complex and dangerous regions in the world.“

Sima Samar is a doctor for the poor, an educator of the marginalised and defender of the human rights of all in Afghanistan. She has established and nurtured the Shuhada Organization that, in 2012, operated more than one hundred schools and 15 clinics and hospitals dedicated to providing education and healthcare, particularly focusing on women and girls. She served in the Interim Administration of Afghanistan and established the first-ever Ministry of Women’s Affairs. Since 2004, she has chaired the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission that holds human rights violators accountable, a commitment that has put her own life at great risk.

QUETTA: Two Shia men were gunned down in separate firing incidents in less than one hour in the provincial capital on Thursday.

In the first incident, a man was gunned down near Langove Plaza in Double Road area.

According to police, unidentified armed men entered a shop in the plaza and opened fire. Resultantly, a man was killed on the spot. The attackers managed to escape on a motorbike. The deceased was identified as Ghulam Shaki, a resident of Nechyari Road. He worked for Geological Survey of Pakistan.

In the second incident, a man was gunned down in Goal Masjid area of Satellite Town.

According to police, unidentified armed men entered a photocopy shop and opened fire. As a result, a man was killed on the spot. The deceased was identified as Gulab Shah, a resident of Hazara Town. staff report

Mengal says it is the first time in history of Balochistan that they are being summoned to court as accused. PHOTO: REUTERS/FILE

QUETTA: Balochistan National Party (BNP) leader and former Chief Minister Balochistan Akhtar Mengal presented five recommendations for the province in court and said that pardons and packages would not solve the Balochistan crisis,Express News reported on Thursday.

Mengal made these remarks after the Balochistan security case which was underway in the Supreme Court’s Quetta Registry.

He recorded his comments in the court and said that the missing people should be recovered and their kidnappers should be brought to court.

Mengal also said that whoever was involved in target killings, be it of the Baloch or Hazaras, should be brought to justice.

The former chief minister said that those responsible for Bugti’s murder should be punished, while migrants should be provided settlements.

“It is for the first time in the history of Balochistan that we are being summoned to court as the accused,” said the former minister.

Mengal said that 450 mutilated bodies have been recovered, whose cause of death was no earthquake or tsunami.

Speaking on Dera Bugti, he said: “Dera Bugti is in the state that Bugti’s own wife and children cannot visit his grave.”

QUETTA: Expressing concern over the incidents of sectarian targeted killings, Senate’s Standing Committee on Human Rights on Wednesday urged the Balochistan government to evolve a comprehensive strategy to curb such incidents.

The meeting of the committee was held with Senator Afrasiab Khattak in the chair. The committee’s members, president’s spokesman Farhatullah Babar, Senator Mushahidullah Khan, Senator Mushahid Hussain, Farhat Abbass and Balochistan government officials were present on the occasion.

During the meeting, the notables of Hazara community, religious scholars and the relatives of people killed in sectarian targeted killing incidents briefed the committee that more than 700 people of Hazara community had been killed in sectarian targeted killing incidents. “We have taken this issue with provincial and federal authorities but no serious attention was paid in this regard,” they informed the committee, adding that most of the relatives of Hazara community people who had been killed since 1999 were not given compensation. They told the standing committee that the provincial government had failed to provide them security.

At this, Senator Afrasiab Khattak and Senator Mushaid Hussain told them that the committee would visit Quetta to hear their grievances and present them in the Upper House of parliament.

They assured the relatives of the deceased that steps would be taken for security of all affected people, including the people of Hazara community.

Committee’s chairman observed that Balochistan was confronted with many issues and they were well cognisant of the issues, adding that there was also the issue of missing persons and sectarian targeted killings but the standing committee would take up all issues one by one.

On the occasion, relatives of Sunni religious scholars who were killed in incidences of targeted killing also met with the members of the committee and told them that 36 religious scholars had been killed since 2010. They said that besides targeting religious scholars, several accused were also arrested by police, but the government was not cooperating with them. “The provincial government even did not bother to know the condition of the affected families,” they added.

Committee’s Chairman Afrasiab Khattak assured the victims’ families of every possible help and told them that the purpose of their visit was to meet the victims’ families and hear their grievances. He said that all the affected families were oppressed and there was no difference among various sects.

STOCKHOLM: Afghan human rights activist, ex-minister and burqa opponent Sima Samar on Thursday won the Swedish Right Livelihood Award honouring those who work to improve the lives of others.

Samar, 55, was honoured “for her longstanding and courageous dedication to human rights, especially the rights of women, in one of the most complex and dangerous regions in the world,” the jury said in a statement.

A medical doctor by training, Samar fled to Pakistan in 1984 when her husband disappeared following his arrest by Afghanistan’s communist regime.

She returned in 2001 to become her country’s first minister of women’s affairs, but had to resign after just six months after she criticised sharia law in an interview in Canada.

She was in 2002 named the head of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, which she still leads, and was from 2005 to 2009 the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Sudan.

Samar shares the 2012 Right Livelihood Award with American political theorist Gene Sharp, 84, whom the jury described as “the world’s foremost expert on non-violent revolution”, and a non-governmental organisation compaigning for an end to British arms exports, Campaign Against Arms Trade.

An honorary prize was awarded to 90-year-old Hayrettin Karaca, “considered the grandfather of the Turkish environmental movement,” the jury said.

Swedish-German philatelist Jakob von Uexkull founded the donor-funded prize in 1980 after the Nobel Foundation behind the Nobel Prizes refused to create awards honouring efforts in the fields of the environment and international development.

For this reason, the Right Livelihood Award Foundation oftens calls its distinction the “alternative Nobel prize.”

The three Right Livelihood winners share the prize sum of 150,000 euros ($193,000).

...........LeJ's dramatic rise is perturbing for the following reasons.

All top LeJ commanders in Balochistan come from lower-middle class Baloch families. The Balochs have historically remained a secular people with rare connections with forces that fought in the name of religion. Hundreds of Muslim religious schools established across Balochistan with the covert funding of Saudi Arabia and Pakistani government to counter the ongoing Baloch separatist movement richly provide manpower to Muslim extremist groups.

Left-wing Baloch nationalists admit that self- Jihadist groups are actively engaged in employing young Balochs from religious schools for their unholy battles. The regional nationalists describethis phenomenon as a "deliberate policy" of the Pakistani intelligence agencies to undermine their movement. Radical Islam, they say, is used as an antidote to address mounting anti-Pakistan sentiments in Balochistan.

At present, there are no overt tensions between Baloch nationalists and neo-Jihadists in the Baloch-populated districts. The nationalists say they are already engaged in a full-fledged battle against the Pakistani government and cannot afford to open another front against extremist Islamic groups. But the current non-interference policy in each other's operations may not last long. Tensions have been brewing, although slowly.

Friday, September 21, 2012

GENEVA: Balochistan’s unofficial representative to the United Nations Mehran Baloch has alleged that the restive province is being “Talibanised” by the establishment to further religious and ethnic divisions to weaken the nationalist and progressive forces.

Baloch was speaking at a seminar he organised here on Thursday at the Palais Des Nations, the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) headquarters, which was attended by a large number of human rights campaigners, NGOs and delegates from various countries.

At least three senior UNHRC representatives attended the seminar as observers but they did not take part in the discussion on Balochistan situation. The speakers included Tarek Fateh, a left-wing commentator from Canada, Dr Charles Graves, ex-Member of European Parliament (ex-MEP) Pablo Casaka, Zafar Baloch, Noordin Mengal and Baseer Naweed of the Asian Human Rights Commission.

Baloch said that UN Working Group on Involuntary Disappearances in its recent visit to the country had its work “extensively obstructed by the authorities, at time on the pretext of security and sometime there was no security for them”.

He alleged the working group members were told their visit was not necessary and “every trick was used to disrupt their work so that to hide the real nature of the atrocity that exists”.

Speaking on the spike in sectarian violence in the province, Baloch said: “The Talibanisation of Balochistan targets the most vulnerable sections of Baloch society, namely the women and religious minorities. The relentless killings of Hazara are a burning issue of our times and it exposes the true face of those who have forever promoted hatred on sectarian and ethnic lines to help their agenda of subjugating the masses.”

He said several militant organisations have established their foothold in the province under the guise of social welfare work. The other speakers raised the issue of involuntary disappearances and feared that thousands of people may have been killed as despite many requests the agencies were not responding as to what had happened to the lives of those they have allegedly picked up. They called on the government of Pakistan to halt military operation in some parts of Balochistan, especially Marri and Bugti areas.

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

People from the Hazara community in Balochistan mourn over the death of their relative. – File Photo

Packed with 80 to 82 fellow passengers, as their boat left the port in Jakarta, Amjad Hussain, was still unsure if he’d made the right decision leaving his family, his career, and his country for an alien land.

A print and broadcast journalist, Hussain, 38, belongs to the Hazara Shia community. He decided to leave Pakistan illegally and seek asylum in Australia in February after he realised the legal route would take forever.

Many journalists in Pakistan say he made the right decision otherwise he may have met the same fate as his journalist friend Saleem Shahezad’s, who many believe got caught in the crosshairs of Pakistan’s spy agencies and was killed in 2010 after he had written an investigative piece pointing to infiltration by the Al-Qaeda into the armed forces.

Over the last one decade, the Hazara Shias, easily recognised by their Mongol-like features, have been a target of persecution because of their ethnicity. In Pakistan there are an estimated 956,000 people belonging to this community of which 600,000 live in Quetta city alone. Abdul Khaliq, chairperson of the Hazara Democratic Party has seen as many as 25,000 from his community fleeing Pakistan in the last decade or so. Official statistics are hard to come by but the exodus has been fuelled by the rise in target killings of members of this community.

“Sectarianism is increasingly becoming widely accepted in Pakistan and the space for minorities (including those who are minorities by belonging to a different sect) is shrinking,” pointed out Zohra Yusuf, chairperson of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP).

A fact-finding mission undertaken by the HRCP from May 15-19, 2012 in Balochistan, and which was made public in a report last month, pointed out that the Hazara community believed that those responsible for law enforcement in Balochistan were involved in their killings.

“We have no evidence but also wonder why under the high security conditions of Balochistan killers can act with impunity,” Yusuf told Dawn.com, adding: “When security agencies can pick up Baloch nationalists so easily, why not the killers of Hazaras?”

The Human Rights Watch has pointed Lashkar-e-Jahnagvi (LeJ) to be behind these killings. “It claims responsibility for these attacks,” Pakistan director of the HRW, Ali Dayan Hasan told Dawn.com.

“The LeJ, supposedly a banned party, is very active in the Punjab and has set up cells in Balochistan,” agreed HRCP’s Yusuf.

In June 2011, LeJ warned the Hazaras: “…jihad against Shia-Hazara has become our duty. We will rest only after hoisting the flag of true Islam on the land of the pure – Pakistan.”

The HRCP reported that “talibanisation” was growing and what was even more worrisome was that “unlike the past, religious fanaticism was not merely being exported to the province from elsewhere; it was now being bred in Balochistan”. A growing network of madressas, said the HRCP, had fuelled inter-sect tensions and there were fears that the “security forces were patronizing militants and Quetta was being turned into a haven for militants”.

Ambushed, identified and forced out of buses and vans, since the beginning of the year over four dozen Hazara Shias have been massacred mercilessly, in over 21 separate incidents of violence, according to the South Asia Terrorist Portal (SATP). In 2011, 203 Shias were killed of which 27 belonged to the Hazara community.

But Ambreen Agha, a researcher with the Institute for Conflict Management in New Delhi, that manages the SATP, is not surprised by the scores of Hazaras leaving Pakistan.

“Pakistan’s lackadaisical approach towards sectarian militant outfits has emboldened them, pushing the Hazaras out of their ghettos in search of a land that could give them the basic rights to live in peace and security,” Ambreen says.

“It is because of Islamabad’s internal functional collapse and operational success of sectarian-militant outfits which continue to target them,” she explains to Dawn.com

In addition, living in constant fear of persecution has rendered the community to become ghettoised. Qadir Nayel, another Hazara journalist is on “forced leave” since the past one month.

“It’s too dangerous to venture out so my organisation has given me leave,” he tells Dawn.com. Unfortunately, this leave is without pay. Meanwhile, his older brother remains missing since he boarded a ship in Jakarta in May for Australia. “His family of four is also my responsibility,” referring to the financial crunch he was feeling.

Muhammad Amir Rana, editor of the quarterly research journal Conflict and Peace Studies, says: “The state fears backlash from majority stake holders, which further ignites the crisis”. It is the “fire-fighting approach” towards ideological and ethnic issues, says Rana, which makes it impossible for the state from taking concrete steps to stem the violence.

But even organisations that facilitate refugees otherwise are nowhere to be seen. Dunya Aslam Khan of the UNHCR, while pointing out her organisation’s limitations put the responsibility squarely on the shoulders of the Pakistan government.

“The UNHCR’s mandate is limited to refugees, stateless and the internally displaced people. Protection of people affected by violence within the boundaries of their own country is the responsibility of the government of the land,” she told Dawn.com.

But the journey to peace and security is not only fraught with danger, it is quite expensive. Many, like Hussain have paid huge sums to human traffickers for a perilous sea and sneaked into Australia, but many others, like Naye’l brother, have not been so lucky. Khaliq, talking to Dawn.com estimates that there are over a 1,000 people perished before reaching their destination.

“You need a minimum of US$ 10,000 to undertake the journey. Another $15,000 to 20,000 after you land in Australia to be able to survive till you find a job,” says Hussain, speaking to Dawn.com, narrating the harrowing experience of being smuggled, over Skype from Brisbane, where he waits to for his citizenship.

Nayel, talking over phone from Quetta, too, confirmed the amount saying his brother paid the trafficker $ 10,000 for the journey. In addition, it may take from a couple of weeks to as long as six months to take the final sea journey from Jakarta to Australia and those seeking this illegal way have to make provision for the sojourn too.

As the small, rickety fishing boat lurched perilously cutting the sea, sitting among scores of sea-sick people, in the thick of the night, for the hundredth time, Hussain said he wondered if he’d make it alive. It was February of this year, spending two days and two nights under the open sky till he reached Christmas Island from Jakarta. He spent over five months in a detention centre, before his asylum application was accepted and he was released.

The path usually taken by asylum seekers from countries like Iran, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Pakistan, who want to reach Australia is to fly from home country to Bangkok or Kuala Lumpur and then to Jakarta. From Jakarta they are taken on a small boat to Christmas Island, a territory in the Indian Ocean closest to Indonesia. Since the late 2009, more than 600 people have died and not made it to the island.

“It’s a big ocean; it’s a dangerous ocean,” said Prime Minister Julia Gillard. “We’ve seen too many people lose their lives trying to make the journey to Australia.” She had proposed sending asylum seekers to Malaysia for processing, but the plan was rejected by Australia’s highest court.

In August, the Australian parliament tried bring about changes in its immigration policy to deter asylum seekers by deporting them to offshore detention centres. However, this was met with strong criticism from rights groups.

“It’s horrible being a refugee,” he says, adding: “I’d never have left Pakistan; if circumstances had been different. It’s my country; it’s where I have an identity,” he says, his voice trembling with emotion. “But I was given no option…” he added.

Hussain said it took them a century to make a mark in Pakistan (after they fled similar persecution by dominant Sunni Pashtun tribes in Afghanistan) and it will “take us another 100 years to find our place in Australia!” he said.

Sunday, September 16, 2012

QUETTA - The UN team visiting Quetta discussed the issue of missing persons with delegations of various nationalist parties and groups here on the second consecutive day, on Sunday.Separate delegations of Balochistan National Party-Mengal, Jamhoori Watan Party, Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party, Hazara Qumi Jirga and Shia Conference called on the UN Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances, here at a local hotel.BNP-Mengal acting President Dr Jahanzaib Jamaldini along with secretary information Agha Hassan Baloch, Kurshid Jamaldini and others met the UN mission being headed by Olivier de Frouville.The UN delegation avoided talking to the media, but Agha Hassan Baloch said the UN team told them that they had met with a large number of people and they have the impression that something was seriously wrong because of which the people are so worried and anxious.Talking to The Nation, Agha Hassan Baloch said that they presented a list of 62 leaders of BNP, including party’s former central secretary-general Habib Jalib Baloch, who were targeted killed. He said they told the UN officials that they were killed under a conspiracy.“The number of missing persons in Balochistan is above 14,000, however, the party had prepared a list of 1,000 missing persons and had already dispatched it to UN and other international organisations of human rights. It included 480 decomposed dead bodies found dumped from desolated areas of Balochistan – a fact which the government has also verbally accepted.”The BNP leader said that sheer violation of human rights was underway in Balochistan which had been started in dictatorial regime of Pervez Musharraf and it was continuing without any respite. “The BNP urged UN and other international human rights organisations for playing their due role in ending this violation of human rights, and that through a well-knitted plan political leaders and activists are being eliminated so that nobody could raise voice against the looting and plundering of the resources of the province,” he added.After meeting the UN team, Jahmoori Watan Party’s chief Talal Akbar Bugti told the media that he had apprised the UN officials about the extra judicial arrests, enforced disappearances, violation of human rights and recovery of mutilated dead bodies in Balochistan. “More than 13,000 people are missing in Balochistan. As we have no access to other areas therefore the JWP delegation presented a list of only 650 missing persons with complete details,” Talal Bugti said. However, he said that they had no “big expectations” from the UN because wherever it has interest it deploys its army and where it has no interest it keeps mum and does not show any serious concern.Sources said that a delegation of Hazara Qumi Jirga apprised the UN Working Group about the sectarian targeted killing of Hazara community and that the government was not playing its role in curbing such incidents. They urged upon the UN to exert pressure on government to ensure security to the Hazara community.

Last Saturday was just another day in 13-year-old Liaquat Ali's house in Quetta. The young Hazara boy's mother asked him to help her with some chores, but he wanted to go out. After some back and forth of her pleading and him refusing, he walked out. His father went back twice to persuade him to come back and help his mother with the chores.

"I have to go; you won't see me again," he said angrily to his mother. He was wrong. And he was right.

They did see him a short while later. By then, his body had bullet wounds, his bleeding wouldn't stop, and he was in a coma.

His father, Mohammad Akbar, is wracked with guilt. "They said he's unconscious. He never spoke again." Liaquat's words had come true in the most terrible way possible.

The ongoing massacre of Hazaras by extremists in Balochistan is part of the killing of Shias all across the country, which has left hundreds dead and thousands mourning. Millions more have been outraged by the lack of action by the government.

There was a protest demonstration on Brewery Road in Quetta that day against the violence against the Hazaracommunity, only a few minutes away from MohalaBagh where Liaquat Ali lived.

He left the house at 10:30 in the morning. A few minutes later, his father learned that a Hazaraneighbour from his street had become a victim of the violence. He went to their house to console the grieving family and waited for yet another body to arrive. At 11, it was him who needed consoling....Continue Reading....

QUETTA, PAKISTAN — In the Shiite Muslim graveyard of this provincial Pakistani capital, entire sections are dedicated to the hundreds killed by Sunni militants over the past two years, their portraits line the cobblestone entrance, some garlanded with wilted flowers.

There's Abid Ali Nazish, a popular movie star executed by gunmen in the summer. Nearby are the portraits of two brothers who were dragged out of a bus and shot to death on the road as they returned from pilgrimage in June. An Olympic boxer, Ibrar Hussain, has a large portrait, and then a smaller photo on his grave showing him sitting proudly next to American boxing great Mohammed Ali.

Hussain was just leaving Quetta's Ayub Stadium when a motorcyclist drove by and gunned him down last year, said Bostan Kishtmandi, a local Shiite politician, as he strolled past the graves. He "was retired and teaching our young boxers. We loved him," Kishtmandi said.

Pakistan's Shiite minority is feeling under siege as Sunni militants who view them as heretics step up a campaign of sectarian attacks, targeting them with shootings and car bombings. More than 300 Shiites have been killed so far this year, according to Human Rights Watch. The province of Baluchistan, where Quetta is the capital and which has the country's largest Shiite community, has borne the brunt, with more than 100 killed this year, on the way to surpassing the 2011 total of 118.

"I am afraid of terrorists everywhere in Quetta, except here with the dead," said Gulbar Abbas, an elderly man who spends every day in the graveyard, living off donations from visitors as he sits on a dirty quilt on a stone slab and reads the Quran from morning to night.

The sectarian bloodletting adds another layer to the turmoil in Pakistan, where the government is fighting an insurgency by the Pakistani Taliban and where many fear Sunni hardliners are gaining strength. Shiites and rights group say the government does little to protect Shiites and that militants are emboldened because they are believed to have links to Pakistan's intelligence agencies.

The powerful agencies have often been linked to the murky world of militancy, accused of using hardline Sunni Muslim militants against enemy India in the disputed Kashmir region and against U.S. and NATO soldiers next door in Afghanistan.

But the rise in the bloodshed and worries over security slipping out of control are bringing pressure for action. Fearing an all-out sectarian war, the Baluchistan government last week called in the paramilitary Frontier Corps to help the understaffed and underequipped local police.

The judiciary has also become unprecedentedly vocal in pointing the finger at the intelligence agencies. Last week, a panel of three Supreme Court judges, led by Pakistan's Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, told a packed Quetta courtroom that it had heard testimony that militants were getting weapons and unregistered vehicles from the intelligence agencies. At least two suicide attacks this year in Quetta involved unregistered vehicles, according to the police. The court ordered the government to produce a list of all weapons and ammunition permits issued on the orders of the intelligence agencies, as well as vehicles brought into Pakistan duty free by the agencies.

In a strong and rare rebuke, the judges slammed the security agencies' record against militant activities in Quetta.

"The result is zero. There has been zero accomplished, not against suicide bombings, not against target killings," Chaudhry said.

So far, the intelligence and security agencies have not responded.

Shiites make up around 15 percent of Pakistan's 190 million people. They are scattered around the country, but the southwestern province of Baluchistan has the largest community, mainly made up of ethnic Hazaras, easily identified by their facial features which resemble Central Asian features. They number some 300,000 in Quetta, a city of 1.2 million people.

Sunni extremists consider all Shiites as heretics, and militants have long carried out attacks against the community. But the sectarian campaign has stepped up in recent years, fueled mainly by the radical group Laskar-e-Jangvhi, aligned to Pakistani Taliban militants headquartered in the tribal regions. The violence has pushed Baluchistan in particular deeper into chaos. The province was already facing an armed insurgency by ethnic Baluch separatists who frequently attack security forces and government facilities. But the secessionist violence has been overtaken by increasingly bold attacks against Shiites.

Militants have packed cars with explosives and driven them into buses carrying Shiite Muslim students to universities and pilgrims returning from holy sites in Iran. Gunmen have walked into shops in Quetta's busy bazaars and slaughtered storekeepers as they tended to customers. They have picked off prominent Shiites as they left their homes for work. They have taken out newspaper ads telling Shiites to leave Quetta and Pakistan and vowing to kill any Sunni who calls a Shiite a friend.

More than 300 Shiites have been killed in Baluchistan alone the past two years, the community here says. Thirty-eight Shiites were killed in just two weeks in Quetta earlier this year, said a liberal political party representing Hazaras. When were these two weeks?

As a result, many Shiites in Quetta have pulled their children from universities, shuttered their shops and rarely step out of the two enclaves in the city where their numbers dominate. There have been a few revenge attacks killing Sunni Muslim clerics.

Lashkar-e-Janghvi, headquartered in Pakistan's Punjab province, has carried out attacks elsewhere in the country as well. On Monday, a car bomb killed 12 Shiites in the Kurram tribal region, the only tribal area where Shiites outnumber Sunnis.

Last month police in the eastern Punjab province arrested a leader of Lashkar-e-Janghvi, Malik Ishaq, for inciting hate. But on Monday, he was freed on bail.

That only fueled Shiites' believe that the government has little interest in going after those who attack their community.

"From law enforcement, government or any institution we are 100 percent disappointed," Abdul Khaliq Hazara, leader of the Hazara Democratic Party, said at his home in Quetta.

"We also blame elements with the intelligence agencies that support them (Sunni militants) and give them shelter, show them the routes. It has become a policy it seems for them to bring religious extremism to this area," he said.

The Baluchistan government's move to call in the paramilitary Frontier Corps reflects their struggle with dealing with the violence.

"We decided to call them in for two months because we didn't want to take a chance on human lives," Baluchistan's top bureaucrat and Chief Secretary Babar Yaqoob Fateh Muhammed told The AP. "Right now sectarianism is our biggest threat. We have made some progress. But have we succeeded? No."

"We know it is Lashkar-e-Janghvi and we have to attack them. ... There is no reluctance to conducting a big operation or to going after them in a big way but so far we have not had very useful information," he said.

The Frontier Corps and the police have provided security to Shiite Muslims travelling in Quetta, escorting school buses and local merchants. Few arrests have been made and Hazara said his political party wants the Frontier Corps and the police "to go after everyone involved in the killings."

Kathy Gannon is AP Special Regional Correspondent for Pakistan and Afghanistan. She can be followed on http://www.twitter.com/kathygannon

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Far too many children take incredibly risky journeys because they face no good choices. They can’t go home because of persecution or war, and they can’t stay put, because Indonesia doesn’t assist with basic needs or address their legal status.Zama Coursen-Neff, children's rights director

(Jakarta) – The Australian and Indonesian governments should urgently take effective measures to protect migrant children at high risk of abuse while in Indonesia en route to Australia, Human Rights Watch said today.

The sinking on August 29, 2012, of an unseaworthy boat filled with migrant families heading to Australia highlights the need for better protection for migrant children from outside Indonesia, Human Rights Watch said. Media reports indicate that children were among the more than 100 fatalities from the incident in Indonesia’s Sunda Strait.

“Far too many children take incredibly risky journeys because they face no good choices,” said Zama Coursen-Neff, children’s rights director at Human Rights Watch. “They can’t go home because of persecution or war, and they can’t stay put, because Indonesia doesn’t assist with basic needs or address their legal status.”

A 10-year-old Afghan boy, Omed Jafari, was among those rescued in last week’s boat sinking. He was badly sunburned and dehydrated, and news reports indicate he lost his father and other relatives in the incident. Mangamed Tamin Satiawan, the head of the immigration office in Indonesia’s Merak district, said Omed’s case would be expedited “because his case is special. He’s just a kid.” But his case highlights the need for special attention to all cases involving migrant children, Human Rights Watch said.

Recent Human Rights Watch research in Indonesia found that hundreds of migrant children, especially unaccompanied children, from Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Burma, and elsewhere, face detention, mistreatment in custody, no access to education, and little or no basic assistance in Indonesia. The Indonesian government does not provide them or their families opportunities to obtain legal status, such as to seek asylum. Many migrants consider traveling to Australia on boats arranged by smugglers a viable option, despite the dangers.

Unaccompanied migrant children – those who travel without their parents or other caregivers – have to make these decisions without guidance. Arief B., an ethnic Hazara from Afghanistan, was 15 years old when he traveled to Indonesia alone with the goal of finding safety in Australia. Arief’s boat went into distress and for three days before he was rescued, he watched many of his fellow passengers drown.

“Now, I am afraid of the water,” Arief told Human Rights Watch. “For three days and nights, no water and food. We kept climbing higher and higher as the boat was sinking.”

After Arief was rescued, the Indonesian authorities took him to a detention center, where for three months he was kept with unrelated adults. He had no access to education or to legal assistance. Guards beat him for trying to escape.

There are at least 150 unaccompanied migrant children recognized by the United Nations refugee agency in Indonesia, and many more who have not received any recognition, legal or otherwise, by the authorities. None of these children receives adequate protection, such as guardianship, legal assistance, or documentation from Indonesia. Many contemplate or undertake dangerous boat journeys to escape the hardship.

“Unaccompanied migrant children attempting to transit Indonesia en route to Australia too often fall into a legal black hole in which their rights are denied and their health and physical safety are put at risk,” Coursen-Neff said.

Human Rights Watch interviewed both unaccompanied migrant children and children who traveled to Indonesia with their families. Many families – like Omed’s – also find themselves deciding to risk the boat journey to Australia, arranging with smugglers for passage from Jakarta, Kupang, Banjarmasin, and other parts of the Indonesian archipelago.

Indonesian authorities frequently detain undocumented migrants, including unaccompanied children and children in families, for months or years in squalid conditions without access to education or in some cases outdoor recreation. There are large immigration detention facilities in Jakarta, Pontianak, Tanjung Pinang, Belawan, and elsewhere in Indonesia.

Restrictive immigration policies in Indonesia and in Australia facilitate the conditions in which families with children and unaccompanied children will take these risks, Human Rights Watch said.

The Australian government has a resettlement scheme in place for some migrants in Indonesia who are recognized as refugees by the UN refugee agency. However, this process can take years, during which time migrants remain in detention or live without work authorization or, in some cases, any legal documents, in Indonesia.

One Afghan father told Human Rights Watch of his experience in Indonesia: “After eight or nine months you are called for an interview, and then there’s more time to wait for the result. It’s taking years, and people’s families are back home, needing money. At least on the boats, you know your fate in 36 hours, in 24 hours.”

Indonesia has not ratified the 1951 Refugee Convention, and provides no formal protection for children who are seeking asylum. Under its obligations as party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, it may only detain children in very limited circumstances, and is obligated to provide all children with education and not discriminate among children based on migration status.

“The ongoing discussions between Indonesia and Australia to improve cooperation on search-and-rescue operations for ships at sea are important, but more needs to be done,” Coursen-Neff said. “Australia should expedite its resettlement process. Indonesia needs to stop detaining migrant children and create mechanisms giving them access to education and addressing legal status.”

Thursday, September 6, 2012

Funeral in the Hazara graveyard in Quetta for victims of gunmen. Credit: Altaf Safdari/IPS

KARACHI, Pakistan, Sep 6 2012 (IPS) - It will be no less than a miracle if Nadir Ali makes it to Australia, where he planned to seek asylum. But with each passing day, since his boat went missing over two months ago, hopes are dimming.

Ali, a 45-year-old Shia Hazara daily wage earner from Quetta in Pakistan’s Balochistan province, had reached Indonesia and boarded the boat from Jakarta on May 22, along with 24 others, most of them from the same community. But the boat lost contact soon after it hit the high seas, and has been missing for over two months.

“We were told that the sea was rough and the boat was too small,” said Qadir Nayel, Ali’s younger brother speaking to IPS over the phone from Quetta. “But because there is no news of them having drowned, we are hoping against hope.” Nayel said his brother paid over 10,000 dollars for the passage.

But why are Hazaras fleeing the country?

In what looks like a rerun of history, the Hazara Shias, with a population of around 956,000 (nearly 600,000 of whom live in Quetta alone), are being persecuted again in Pakistan because of their ethnicity and their history of conflict with Sunni Muslims.

Most of the world’s 3.4 million Hazara people, easily recognisable by their Mongol-like features, live in Afghanistan. But some 120 years ago, many fled that country, where they were being persecuted by the dominant Sunni Pashtun tribes. In Pakistan they were well received, and some rose to important positions in the government.

Another 350,000 Hazara live in Iran.

Shias of all ethnicities account for about 20 percent of Pakistan’s Sunni-majority population of 180 million.

Hussain (name changed on request) lost five members of his family, including a maternal uncle, a widowed sister-in-law and her three children, when the boat they were travelling in was shipwrecked in high waters in the Indian Ocean in 2009.

“The last time my uncle spoke to me was before boarding the ship from Jakarta,” Hussain said. “He sounded very disturbed with the arrangement. He said if he’d known, he would never have ventured out in the first place. By morning we got the news that their ship had gone under and all of them had perished.”

In recent years, scores of Hazara Shias have fled Balochistan in southwest Pakistan. There are significant communities of Hazara in Europe, Turkey and Australia.

While official statistics are hard to come by and people are afraid to give information, the exodus has been fuelled by the rise in target killings of members of this community.

According to Abdul Khaliq, chairman of the Hazara Democratic Party, over 25,000 Hazaras have left Pakistan in the last decade, the vast majority of them in the last three years. “I’d say over 1,000 people have perished while making the perilous journey,” he told IPS over the phone from Quetta.

He was referring to the most common route followed by the fleeing Hazara, who go to Indonesia legally and then try to sneak into Australia illegally.

Ali Dayan Hasan, Pakistan director of Human Rights Watch, told IPS that the Hazara have been reduced to a “ghetto existence in Quetta.”

“They can only go about their daily business at the risk of their lives. It is hardly surprising that members of the Hazara community are seeking political asylum in large numbers, and it would be a very cruel host state indeed that would deny them the same,” he added.

For his part, Hussain said “Nobody wants to leave their country willingly; who would want to leave family and friends and take on a journey we all know is fraught with danger, but we have been pushed to the wall.”

Since the beginning of the year, 47 Shia Hazaras have been killed in 21 separate incidents of violence, according to the South Asia Terrorist Portal (SATP). In 2011, 203 Shias were killed, including 27 Hazaras.

Lately, they have been identified, forced out of buses and vans, and killed. Ambreen Agha, a researcher with the Institute for Conflict Management in New Delhi, which manages the SATP, terms the killing of Hazaras a “sectarian issue.”

“Their Shia identity has posed a threat to their existence in a society that is marred by religious intolerance, the existence of extremist formations, and subsequent impunity that sectarian ‘murderers’ enjoy within the legal and political framework of Pakistan,” she told IPS by email. “Sectarianism adds to the chaotic spirit of Islamabad.”

This was corroborated by HRW’s Hasan. “Hazaras are being targeted as part of a broader exercise in targeting all Pakistani Shias, but it is equally true that the Hazara suffer from double jeopardy – being ethnically distinct in addition to being Shia.”

HRW’s research indicates that the banned Sunni militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) is behind the killings. “It claims responsibility for these attacks,” said Hasan.

In June 2011, LeJ warned the Hazaras: “…now jihad against the Shia Hazara has become our duty. We will rest only after hoisting the flag of true Islam on the land of the pure – Pakistan.”

To Agha it means a “total failure or collusion” of the state machinery with these militant organisations.

Hasan said “The state may or may not be complicit in the LeJ’s murderous actions, but independent observers believe that law enforcement and intelligence agencies are, at the very least, turning a blind eye.”

Agha, who has been researching Hazara issues since 2010, complained that the Pakistani state has never “mounted any effective resistance” or carried out a “sustained effort to dismantle the hard-core sectarian militant outfits” that have linkages with both the religious parties and the Pakistani establishment.

“Unless Islamabad abandons its policy of tolerance towards the sectarian religious parties and their militant counterparts, there is little hope that Hazara Shias will continue to live in peace within the poisoned territorial boundaries of Pakistan,” she maintained.

Meanwhile, thousands of asylum-seekers from Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, many of whom belong to the Hazara community, have been trying to reach Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean – Australia’s closest point to Indonesia – in rickety, overcrowded vessels. Since late 2009, more than 600 people have died in the attempt to make it to the island.

In August, the Australian parliament tried to make changes in its immigration policy to deter asylum-seekers by deporting them to offshore detention centres. The move met with strong criticism from rights groups.

“It’s a big ocean; it’s a dangerous ocean,” said Prime Minister Julia Gillard. “We’ve seen too many people lose their lives trying to make the journey to Australia.” She had proposed sending asylum-seekers to Malaysia for processing, but the plan was rejected by Australia’s highest court.

THE state’s failure to evolve a strategy for protecting communities that are vulnerable because of their beliefs has resulted not only in an escalation of attacks on them but also in the emergence of new and more vicious forms of violence.

The killing of seven Hazara workers in Quetta the other day confirms the increased use of a standardised procedure for butchering members of the targeted community. The vehicle in which the victims were travelling was ordered to halt and the passengers made to dismount. The national identity cards of the Hazaras, which were supposed to offer the key to their right to life and security, again served as black warrants to what can only be described as their summary execution.

Similar cases had been reported earlier from other parts of Balochistan, such as Mastung, and from Gilgit-Baltistan. These incidents can no longer be attributed to localised sectarian tensions or conflicts between individual actors; they reveal an organised campaign to force Balochistan’s Hazara community to vacate their traditional settlements, if not to exterminate them altogether. If allowed to continue unchecked the anti-Hazara wave of violence could develop into some kind of sectarian cleansing.

These happenings will certainly have a highly adverse impact on the sectarian conflict raging in Gilgit-Baltistan at the other end of the country. The issue there in the beginning was the large Shia population’s aspiration to enjoy their due share in the democratised management of public affairs and the other community’s resolve to resist this legitimate demand to the extent of foregoing its own democratic rights.

Left to themselves the two communities might not have failed to work out a framework for peaceful coexistence and mutual accommodation. The chances of that happening began to be undermined by Gen Zia’s narrow-minded sectarian predilection. By blinking at an external lashkar’s bloody assault on the Gilgit Shias he helped the rise of an interventionist force that has apparently decided not to let the people of Gilgit-Baltistan settle their matters amongst themselves.

These outsiders have never relented in their efforts to keep the sectarian strife going. One is amazed to see that all those who always blame foreign hands for any outbreak of lawlessness have not cared to expose the mischief being done by non-local elements in Gilgit-Baltistan.

And in Balochistan too, for credible evidence is available to show that the campaign against the Hazaras is being carried out largely by militant groups based in other provinces. It has often been alleged that these groups finance their operations out of the ransom money collected from victims of abduction and make regular remittances to their head offices, most of them believed to be in Punjab.

That the government’s failure to apprehend and punish the culprits in most cases if not all is a major cause of increase in belief-related violence is widely understood. The need to probe the causes of this failure has not received due attention. The view that Pakistan as a whole has moved into a new cycle of violence against the weaker segments of society receives considerable support from the affair of the Christian girl rotting in prison on the charge of desecration of the Holy Quran. Nothing reveals Pakistani Muslims’ divorce from sanity as thoroughly as the slogan that the glory of Islam depends on the execution of this mentally challenged adolescent from an oppressed community.

Normally one avoids commenting on matters that are in the stage of investigation but those calling for justice to be done have as much right to have their say as those calling for the girl to be punished before her guilt, or even her ability to consciously commit the offence she has been charged with, is established. The case has acquired additional significance as it displays a new pattern of minority-bashing.

We are familiar with the abuse of blasphemy laws for settling scores with business rivals or to facilitate individual efforts at grabbing the property of members of the weaker communities. The sack of Shantinagar and attacks on Christian churches in Khanewal some years ago and the more recent pillage of Christian quarters in Gojra were attributed to vengeful mischief by the losers in the race for economic advancement.

There was no indication that the law was being abused to force a minority community to vacate the land under its possession or that communal interests of the majority were involved.

A design of this nature has been exposed by the case of the young Christian girl. Her persecutors wanted her community to move off the land occupied by it. Whether those behind the outrage wanted the land to build a colony or a plaza or whether the pious ones only wanted to be rid of some contemptible neighbours is yet to be established. The latter cause is surely much more shameful and distressing than the former. In it can be seen the germs of a segregationist trend the consequences of which will be too horrible to be viewed with equanimity.

Several factors could have contributed to Pakistan’s accession to new heights of holy terror. Only the purblind will fail to see a link between the killing of Hazaras in Quetta, the target killings in Karachi, the persecution of the blasphemy accused, the Peshawar explosion that took a dozen lives, and the beheading of 12 soldiers in the tribal belt. Instant justice by self-appointed judges and executioners is apparently an offshoot of extremist theories, such as the rule of takfir, that have been introduced into Pakistani people’s religious thought by the so-called revivalists of foreign origin.

The law-and-order paraphernalia possesses neither the mind nor the means to meet the threat from these elements; their challenge calls for a well-thought-out and consistent intellectual response. An example of this kind of exercise was furnished by an Islamabad-based NGO, the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, when it held a series of discussions among religious scholars on the phenomenon of Muslims killing fellow Muslims by branding them as renegades.

The proceedings are available in a publication Mas’ala Takfir-wa-Kharooj; and it is a useful introduction to a subject that is likely to have a considerable bearing on our lives. Much more needs to be done in this vein in addition to the promotion of pluralist values from various perspectives, if Pakistani people are to be saved from becoming a horde of savages.